Daily life in a 20th century psychiatric hospital: an oral history of Prestwich Hospital.

Twenty-five loosely structured interviews were conducted with subjects who had been associated with Prestwich Hospital for varying lengths of time between 1922 and 1975. The information which these subjects provided was significant for two reasons. Firstly, it provides an account of what life was like in one large psychiatric institution during the middle years of the twentieth century. Secondly, these accounts revealed that even within one institution there were huge variations in the standard of nursing practice. Furthermore, at the lower end of the continuum of quality of care there was little change in nursing practice until the final quarter of the twentieth century.